Letters to the Editor 7/1

Funding the warlords

Rep. John Tierney, chairman of the House subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, wrote the comments “sobering and shocking” about his recent report regarding Afghanistan “passage bribes” (“Report finds U.S. tax money funds warlords,” June 22).

The report stood my hair on end.

As I read it, private security contractors (war profiteers) pay millions weekly in “passage bribes” to the “Taliban and other insurgent groups” for allowing convoys that supply our military bases and outposts to travel Afghanistan roads.

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These “passage bribes” are funded by our tax dollars and help fund the very enemy we are attempting to defeat. And we have the gaul to snivel about corruption within Afghanistan officials?

Seems to me Gen. Stanley McChrystal could have kicked someone’s desk on his way out the door with that piece of information and God bless his courage!

Our dollars buy bullets and explosives that kill and maim our sons and daughters? Sobering and shocking indeed. Get out and scream!

Jeff Lee

Cambria

Can we fire Obama?

President Barack Obama said he fired Gen. Stanley McChrystal because the general did not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general. President Obama was correct in doing so.

And he should know.

Like when he called the Cambridge police stupid for arresting a belligerent professor. Like when he attended Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church for years. Like when he hired the self-avowed communist Van Jones. Like when he supported the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

Like when he said he bowled like a special Olympian. Like when he gave his first interview as president to a foreign Muslim news agency. Like when he said the middle class clings to their guns or religion. Like when his staff member praised Mao Tse Tung as her favorite philosopher.

President Obama has not met the standard that should be set by a Commander in Chief. Can we fire him?

Jim Kopisch

Atascadero

Done with voting

For the first time in 64 years, I have decided not to vote. My mailbox has been stuffed with political propaganda, my front porch littered with unwanted tracts, my shop radio and my living room TV deluged with claims and counter-claims, blame and counter-blame and then there was the aggravation of the incessant ringing of my telephone with strangers telling me for whom I should vote.

If I were to believe half of this diatribe, I would hold none fit to public office except, perhaps, a dog catcher.

I realize that America has the best politicians money can buy and I no longer want to be a part of it.

Ken Hanson

Los Osos

Accident no surprise

CHP officer Brett Oswald’s death is a horrible tragedy, but no surprise to one who drives South River Road daily.

El Pomar Drive, Neal Springs and South River roads are not freeways. They are county roads with hills, blind curves and intersections with private driveways. Yet drivers using these routes as shortcuts to and from Paso Robles feel entitled to see how fast they can possibly take the next curve and then go flat out.

If they don’t like following a car going 55 mph, they feel fully entitled to pass over a double line and hope that no one is coming the other way. Killing three baby deer in three weeks on a road with a “deer area” sign means slow down.

When was the last speeding ticket written out here, if ever? We worry when leaving our Neal Springs Road driveway for fear of being rear ended by someone traveling 70 mph around a blind curve. The sheriff or CHP needs to get out there daily and start writing $2,000 reckless driving tickets until the message gets out to drivers like Kaylee Weisenberg to slow down before someone else is killed.

It won’t take them long to catch the first one.

Patrick M. Coady

Templeton

Goodies or basics?

Morro Bay’s budget has delivered a pink slip to one of the police department’s hardworking men. Hank Roth has been the one who has overseen the police volunteer and the neighborhood watch programs as well as a multitude of other projects during the past many years. We are extremely uncomfortable that Morro Bay is losing the support of this civic-minded gentleman.

The Christmas trolley wound around Morro Bay for three or four nights with Roth playing Santa Claus. What now?

The neighborhood watch program will continue — it must — with citizen assistance. The Police Department will have to take control of the volunteer program.

Isn’t there some way the city could reduce its expenditures? Just because we have always done it one way, can’t we try another way?

Are we spending more on “goodies” when “basics” are more important to the citizens of Morro Bay?

Ted Miranda

Morro Bay

Hypocritical liberals

What concerns me, Mary Ross (“Where was outrage?,” June 24), is that liberals aren’t honest with facts.

Under President George W. Bush, the economy was robust until Democrats took control of Congress his last two years in office. Barney Frank and “et al” Democrats caused the banking system and housing fiasco. Frank became the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee in 2007.

For your information, President Bush was given permission to go to war in Iraq by both houses of Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike.

President Obama ran his campaign on promises (lies) that he would end the war in Iraq, set a time table to get out of Afghanistan and close Guantánamo Bay. There’s no end in sight! While President Obama “fiddles,” human beings continue dying.

President Obama has “crisis” written all over his face. Under this “rider’s” socialistic policies, we now have a $1.5 trillion deficit. It simply boggles the mind.

So where’s the liberal outrage with President Obama? Why aren’t you liberals marching “hatefully” in the streets at farmers market like when President Bush was in office? The word hypocrites comes to mind.

Roy Kline

Morro Bay

Young objectors

In May 2004, a group of 12 Atascadero High School students gathered and began the concept, design and creation of “The Faces of War: a Peace Memorial.” As conscientious objectors, their intent was to express their opposition to war through the arts. They hoped to voice their compassion for families and friends of United States soldiers killed in Iraq while demonstrating their honest refusal to support warfare.

The art piece took the form of multiple 4-foot-by-5-foot grid wire panels hung with metal dog tags displaying the faces of dead soldiers. After many hours of work, the piece was first displayed in the Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa plaza on July 4, 2004.

The group grew to include new members, new art projects, local awards, media acknowledgement and two trips to Washington D.C., all the while keeping their work in the public eye. The piece has just been moved a final time from the windows of the old Pier 1 Imports building.

I would like to thank the community for their support, but most of all, thank the Young Objectors United to End War for their willingness to speak from their creative hearts about the tragedy of war.